Finally, your corporate website can be relevant again
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been conducting research to measure how different social networks allow for integration with corporate websites and their assets. Over 3 years ago, I wrote a piece on how corporate websites are becoming irrelevant, due to trusted decisions between prospects and customers taking place off the corporate site. This piece, which still gets traffic has been translated into over a dozen languages –the market recognizes that corporate sites can no longer operate as silos when customers have left.

[Companies must integrate customers behavior on social networks to their corporate website to increase relevancy, word of mouth, and trust]

A plethora of options creates confusion in the market
Fast forward to 2010, and there too many options for brands to integrate these social features. While many have used community platforms to allow customers to connect to each other on branded domains, this strategy works for loyal customers and often may not reach prospects. Social networks, which have your customers and prospects, have taken note, and have launched a variety of products that allows their thriving communities of buyers and prospects to connect with static corporate sites. The challenge? There are so many features available, it’s confusing to figure out what to do.

Use this data as a roadmap and guide
Companies and organizations are confused by the wide variety of choices that social networks offer to help them connect to their customers, so I’ve created this menu to help them in understanding.

Matrix: Feature Attribute Benefits of Social Integration

Feature

What it does

Benefits

Downsides

What no one tells you

Sharing Features

Allows users to share content from corporate websites to social networks

Free to deploy, as social newtorks offer features or Sharethis or Addthis

Rather than subject customers to a generic user experience on your corporate website, customize the experience based on their social networking profile, increasing relevancy.

Create a series of specific content types is costly, as well as the engine to develop this.

Don’t assume what a customer does in Twitter is relevant to your own product, one size does not fit all.

Social Context

Present real time information based on their friends behavior, see HuffPo.

Allow your users friends to increase relevancy by suggesting content and products to each other –increasing rate of action.

This is very complicated system to create, and requires a mindset to let go to gain more as users may say and recommend things you don’t like.

Every company is a media company, and the smartest companies realize they are a marketplace.

Application Platform

A platform that offers third parties to create web based applications using the social networks APIs, access to data

Companies want to extend unique features onto social networks (like the most popular content on a corporate site) to increase interaction

Costs to developing these applications are high, you need specific developers that understand the ever changing nuances of these platforms

You’ll need long term resources or budget to do this and your existing team may not have the skill set.

Now that we’ve established a clear sense of the benefits and risks, let’s dive in and understand who offers what. I’ve created the following matrix that I will keep up to date, that will fast forward research activities.

Update: Duzins, from Yahoo has left a comment below showing all of the capabilities that Yahoo has to offer, go into the comments to learn more.

Recommendations: Develop a Pragmatic Strategy

First, understand your customers. It’s unrealistic for you to deploy all of the features above, in fact that would only confuse your customers. Instead do research and find out where your customers are. Then, you’ll know which social network to focus on, and data showing their existing behaviors will tell you which features to focus on.

Integrate this with your website roadmap. Start simple then evolve. Don’t try to boil the ocean, start small with simple sharing features, then follow the stack as I laid out in the second matrix. This is a roadmap that you should use to across the next few years as your corporate website evolves, fusing in social features.

Find partners and agencies that will guide you. Don’t go this alone, find agency partners, or technology providers that know this space and have experiences to reduce your risk. For example, managing all the social connections is more than a brand can take on, for example Gigya, (an Altimeter client) manages all those connections for brands. Forward this post to agency partners and ask them where they are on this roadmap and who they’ve partnered with to do this.

Research SourcesI did my own research to fill in the matrix as much as possible, then went directly to folks that work at those social networks to verify. Thanks to the helpful and knowledgeable Josh Elman, Chris Messina, Adam Nash, (LinkedIn), Amy Walgenbach (MySpace).

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